A pathologist who secretly ordered the removal of organs from hundreds of children's bodies was found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council yesterday and struck off the UK medical register.

Dick van Velzen was responsible for removing hundreds of organs from infants at Alder Hey children's hospital in Liverpool, when he took the parts without the consent of their parents.

More than 2,000 pots containing body parts from 850 children were discovered in a filthy cellar at the hospital during an investigation into the retention of organs.

Last week, the GMC's fitness to practise panel, sitting in Manchester, found 46 charges against Professor Van Velzen, 55, to be proved, after a three-week hearing.

Iain Chisholm, chairman of the panel, said the professor had retained organs without permission and effectively lied to the parents of dead children.

"He practised out of the boundary and was out of touch with people's feelings," Mr Chisholm said. "It was a violation of children's bodies. He has undermined the trust placed in medical practitioners to such an extent it has damaged the medical profession as a whole."

His reckless conduct had caused great distress to the parents of the children involved, he said. "The parents of children who died trusted Professor Van Velzen to care for and respect the remains of their loved ones. Professor Van Velzen violated that trust." Mr Chisholm apologised to the public on behalf of the medical profession.

The GMC must now decide whether to allow Prof Van Velzen 28 days to appeal or to strike him off.

Paul Dearlove, a former laboratory officer at the Liverpool children's hospital, told the hearing that the pathologist kept pots in a filthy cellar and that some of the samples were deteriorating.

Prof Van Velzen, who was in charge of pathology at Alder Hey between 1988 and 1995, never bothered to attend the fitness to practise panel hearing sitting in Manchester, nor did he send any legal representation. He told representatives from the GMC that he did not wish to know anything about the proceedings.

His predecessors had stored small samples of tissue from children's organs. But Prof Van Velzen ordered laboratory staff to retain thousands of pots of organs and to incinerate nothing. The discovery of the pots led to some parents having to carry out two or more funerals for their children. In the case of a 15-year-old, he carried out a full post- mortem examination against the express wishes of the parents, although he later denied this in a letter.In retaining children's organs without consent, Prof Van Velzen was breaking rules laid out in the Human Tissues Act 1961, which states that parts of the body can only be removed if no surviving relative objected.

After he left Liverpool, he worked at a health centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was sacked by the centre for dissatisfactory performance. He was convicted in his absence in Canada of improperly storing body parts removed from a child and was given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay $2,000 (Canadian) to charity. He admitted the charge after the discovery of organs in a warehouse.

The parents of children involved in the Alder Hey scandal were annoyed that Prof Van Velzen did not have to face criminal charges. They said they felt "stabbed in the back" by the Crown Prosecution Service decision last December that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.

The Redfern inquiry, published four years ago, said Prof Van Velzen had "systematically, illegally and unethically" removed the organs and lied to families. Following the publication of the report, he was dismissed from his job at a hospital in The Hague.

Christine Woods, from Kirkby, Merseyside, who lost her day-old son Scott in 1989 and later discovered most of his internal organs had been held in pots on a shelf in a storeroom at Alder Hey, welcomed the decision. "But it doesn't go far enough. There should be a change to international law to ensure that doctors struck off in one country cannot practise overseas.

"Van Velzen has no intention of ever returning to the UK, but is still free to perform postmortems in the Netherlands."